Nike and Dick’s Sporting Goods Battle the Ice

Venice, CA-based visual effects studio The Mission taps into the internal heat of competition in the glacial new :30 ‘Frozen’ for Nike and Dick’s Sporting Goods out of Wieden+Kennedy, Portland, OR.  The spot features a variety of impetuous athletes, fiercely battling the frozen elements to train for their respective sports.  The Mission handled comprehensive VFX for the spot, including on-set supervision, color correction, extensive composite work and CG enhancements of the practical snow.

 

 

To heighten the crispness of the icy elements featured throughout, The Mission’s Creative Director Rob Trent and team employed meticulous CG including an entirely CG shot with CG ice crystals comped onto a CG fence, CG mist and breath for the athletes and CG snow.  Background textural elements including skylines and trees were comped in throughout the spot as well as “winterising” a green field with a CG blanket of snow.  

 

Trent notes: “Sitting there in the 90 degree heat of the Detroit summer and watching the athletes sweat through their 2-hour shoot windows, it was fun to imagine the transformation we would achieve in the end.  Humid, green grass and sunny dusk skies would become crusty snowpacks in a cold, moody void.  Careful preparation with the DP was taken so that the natural lighting was diffused enough to match the end environment.”

 

‘Frozen’ opens on ominous rolling grey clouds and a chain-link fence with a layer of frost just beginning to crystallise.  We see a Dick’s Sporting Goods bottle on the frigid grass with the water inside turning to ice.  We cut to the preparatory breaths of three athletes, readying themselves for winter outdoor lacrosse, soccer and football training.  The intensity of the athletes increases as the wintery elements surge around them.  As we intercut between the players reaching the peak of their training ferocity, a voiceover intones, “This is not when the games are played, but it’s when the games are won.”  Each of the three athletes rush the camera, cutting to a moment of darkness before we see the football player retreating into a thick sheet of falling snow.  The voiceover concludes, “Nike Pro Combat Hyperwarm.  Gear up with the best of Nike cold weather at Dick’s Sporting Goods.”  The spot closes on the Dick’s logo and super, “Every condition.  Every workout.  Every game.  Every season starts at Dick’s Sporting Goods.”